› added 4 years ago

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TIL of Jim Abbott, who played ten seasons in Major League Baseball despite being born with one hand. In 1993, he pitched the eighth no-hitter game in Yankees history.

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VDyB TIL that the Italian government constructed a dam in 1959 despite multiple warnings of the instability of the region. In 1963, a landslide into the reservoir behind the dam triggered a tsunami over 800 ft high that breached the dam and killed nearly 2000 people, leaving a 200 ft deep impact crater.
xEgg TIL in 1976 the Mego Corporation rejected a deal to make Star Wars action figures, saying it that they would go bankrupt if they made toys of every “flash in the pan” sci-fi B movie that came along.
1aebr TIL Steve Jobs was already trying to develop the iPad in 1983, saying what they want to do is "put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes" and that he hoped to sell it for under $1,000 within the decade.
N7kyQ TIL that on May 19th 1989, CBS broke into their primetime programming for over half an hour to broadcast a live dispute between the CBS News team and representatives of the Chinese government. (The government was terminating all foreign broadcasts in a lead up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.)
kOdZm TIL as a child, Joaquin Bottom travelled South America with his family after they joined religous cult Children of God. After learning the truth of the group, the family moved back the States and changed their last name to Phoenix.